Running for office? First, we’ll need to see your toilet
India wants would-be leaders to act as role models in campaign
MUMBAI, INDIA— A growing number of states in India are imposing a new requirement on candidates for local office: They must use a toilet.
The western state of Maharashtra this past week became the latest to pass a law requiring those running in municipal and village-level elections to present proof that they have access to working toilets. Five Indian states — with combined populations of nearly 400 million people, or roughly one-third of the country — have enacted similar legislation over the past two years.
That’s no small demand in a country in which an estimated 40 per cent of people, including more than half in rural areas, lack access to safe, functioning commodes, according to WaterAid, a charity. In much of rural India, most people still defecate in the open due to a lack of toilets and widespread traditional beliefs that it is more wholesome to go outdoors.
Open defecation, however, has been linked to chronic diarrhea and other diseases that lead to stunted growth in children, as well as to violence against women who must leave their homes to relieve themselves.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a “Clean India” campaign that aims to end open defecation and install 110 million toilets nationwide by 2019. Four of the five states that have introduced laws requiring local political candidates to use toilets are led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
State officials say they want local officeholders to serve as role models in following modern sanitation practices.
“It is high time to have this basic amenity at home,” said Maharashtra’s chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, a Modi ally. “We are also promoting the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign. We want to make each and every village and city clean and garbage-free.”
The bill Fadnavis initially proposed last fall would have required every local candidate to have a working toilet at home. That prompted resistance from some opposition parties, which said it would disqualify many poor candidates as well as those living in urban areas who use shared public toilets.
The state government relented and the law passed would allow people to contest elections if they produced a certificate showing they had access to a functioning toilet.
But an independent state lawmaker, Kapil Patil, slammed the law as unconstitutional, saying any Indian adult should be able to run for office without conditions.
“Is it not insulting to submit such a letter before applying for the candidature?” Patil said.
“Where I go to attend nature’s call cannot be anybody else’s business. The government’s responsibility is to provide toilets to everyone. One cannot hold the candidate responsible for the lack of toilets in the state.”